


Dead Stop

by Historian



Category: 2300AD, Traveller
Genre: Dice-based Fiction, Gen, Inspired by Roleplay/Roleplay Adaptation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-29
Updated: 2017-01-06
Packaged: 2018-09-13 05:52:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9109471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Historian/pseuds/Historian
Summary: In the far future of the year 2300, humanity has spread to the stars. Via blurring ships stuttering across the three great arms of expansion, colonies beautiful and inhospitable are founded to push back the frontier of unknown space.At the edge of space, a new menace arrives - and on a small starship, a man develops powers unimaginable. As the first existential threat to mankind sweeps across the French Arm, 4th Officer Remi Veroix goes from freighter engineer to Man's last hope against the dying of the light.Mongoose 2300 is a realistic science fiction roleplaying game, and this fic is written within the rules and game system. Bracketed rolls determine the fate of characters, with only Remi's psionics, wit, and a little GM Fiat keeping him from grisly death amid caustic stars.Though the Kafer War on the French Arm is a major part of the story, Remi's will span the entirety of charted human space - from the chaotic cyberpunk of the core to the dusty deserts of the American Arm, or the exotic aliens of the Chinese Arm. Take a gander at 2300 - as it's meant to be played.





	1. Awakening

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a fan work based on Mongoose's 2300AD setting. Over 300 years ago, NATO and the Warsaw Pact declared war. Atomic hellfire rained, but France's neutrality assured their safety in the postwar era.
> 
> Now, centuries later, nations cross the stars on flickering starships at stutterwarp, moving hundreds of meters in microjumps thousands of times per second. Colonies across three arms (American, Chinese, and French) grow larger every year. Aliens both familiar and different have been met.
> 
> At the edge of the French Arm, near Arcturus, another species is contacted.
> 
> Unlike the rest, these ones aren't friendly. After destroying Arcturus Station, they arrived over Aurore - a French colony. Nuclear bombs and infantry assaults have turned an otherwise dangerous colony world into a deathtrap.
> 
> As warring rivals on Earth turn to the stars, and to the new threat, our story begins.
> 
> Not in the midst of battle, but in the cold of space - not far from a blazing sun...

Mirabeau's Madamoiselle, En-Route to Aurore

Anjou-class Freighter, Maersk Shipping

In the far reaches of space, dozens of lightyears from Earth, a blurring rod flung across the spacelanes. Millions of cycles per second, every particle aboard slipped hundreds of meters onward into the night. Like every other ship in Human space, it was at stutterwarp: the harnessing of Tantalum-180u to create quantum jumps and travel the stars.

Unlike most ships in Human space, however, this one has a problem: its dosimeter.

A ship at stutterwarp can only go 7.7ly before suffering a catastrophic radioactive discharge from its stutterwarp.

Due to decades of service, Monsieur Mirabeau's Lady is an hour from a Tantalic disaster - but the crew don't know that. Dozens of spacers call her home - alongside several passengers. Headed along the expanses of the French Arm, they expect nothing more than a simple trip to the French colony of Aurore.

Take, for instance, Remi Veroix. A 4th Officer aboard the Mirabeau, Remi has been plying the spacelanes since his initial service on several trampy Thorez couriers home in the core. Born on the Alpha Centauri world of Tirane, Earth's first colony, he had a stable upbringing in the grassy fields of Nouvelle Provence, a son of a spacer and a farmer.

In the depths of the Mirabeau, he lurched awake in the twisting heart of the ship's spin capsule. His stateroom was spartan - a desk with a plug, drawers, and velcro everywhere, not to mention his cot. With a free hand, he unplugged his portacomp from the desk socket, gently sleeving it into a plastic slot on his forearm. From a nearby velcro peg, he retrieved his comm cap - fastening it to his head, and plugged into shipwide radio. All was quiet before the change of watch.

As 4th Officer, Remi had dual duty as both watch-pilot during some shifts, as well as his main electrical engineering rate during others. He'd flown the tanky Anjou-class from system-to-system and through orbital maneuvers, but also regularly worked on both the ship's computer systems and primary power wiring.

After procuring a drab olive uniform from his drawers, Remi quickly donned it. The Maersk Star of white on blue was prominent as he zipped up the relevant parts of his costume. Next was his web-gear, a mess of equipment that held anything from spare lights and stickit kits for sealing breaches or holding together materials. He strapped that to his chest and back, leaving his waist free to carry his toolbelt.

The Frenchman flicked on his portacomp, reading low-profile alerts from the ship's mainframe. He frowned as his toolbelt snapped around his waist - reading something about 'electrical malfunction' that was affecting the Engineering circuit. Moments later, the stop alarms started blaring both on his cap radio and on the PA. Overhead, a familiar voice roared: "Slowdown, slowdown, slowdown - Spin Capsule transitioning to Zero-G. Please strap in. Say again, slowdown, slowdown, slowdown."

Remi strapped into his desk chair, grunting as the ship applied several gentle Gs. Energy was being switched to the gyros in the heart of the spin capsule - allowing easy passage from the spinners to the heart of C-Deck in the no-grav section.

For the twenty-one people of the crew, it was time for changeover. For the four spare passengers, it was a momentary distraction in the otherwise montonous trip. Slowly but surely, the acceleration eased off. "All hands, all hands- slowdown complete. Blue watch has the deck, Red watch has the off. Transition is ten minutes - let's get it done." The voice was Captain Rastmussen, a Scandinavian from Earth proper. He'd been a tramp freighter captain for years - only just getting command from Maersk after years of flight aboard an Astral-class Bulk Carrier. That slow behemoth often took an average of two days just for an Earth-Mars Transit - and over thirty days just to reach Saturn on the edge of the Solar System. 

It was plodding - and the transition had been troublesome for their 'senior' captain. For basic bulk cargo transfers within Sol or Tirane, the Astral-class was a slow, impatient journey - even without orbital maneuvers to match planetary velocities and conduct loading and unloading. Being in the heart of the Core, trouble rarely came - and when it did, it was often rescuable. Here, though, on the frontier? The Mirabeau was on her own. Rastmussen was accountable for everything, and his folksy slow-going attitude was grating.

With a loud snap of his chest buckle, Remi floated free - pushing toward his stateroom hatch and grunting as he unseated the latches. He stepped out - first among many aboard his section of the spin hab. Aboard an Anjou, like many ships, the two spin habs were divided between 'Red' watch and 'Blue' watch - each of which took 12 hours of varying intensity. At any given time, one of the two spin habs was empty but spiraling, while the other was fully occupied.

All of the staterooms around Remi slowly craned open - revealing tired crewmen with Maersk stars and nametapes on their own drab fatigues. Everything from paper charts to similar webgear was strapped onto these tired pre-watch crewmen, flags of a dozen countries stenciled to their shoulders. Remi glanced at his own - the Imperial French Tricolor. "Bienvenue!" a voice shouted down the hallway. Out of a larger stateroom had floated Gaspard Bellevieu, the ship's 2nd Officer. His watch was the ship's 2nd and 4th Officers, while the other was the Captain and 3rd. Ideally, the XO trains the 4th Officer, while the CO trains the 3rd Officer. In practice, they all worked in roughly the same shape-whipping capacity.

As 4th Officer, Remi was the least-officer officer, making him more popular than the others - he'd bit his teeth flying short Thorez-class Courier routes from Tirane to Sol and throughout both systems, and then four years on a Thorez rolling packets and cargo all the way from the core to Beta Canum Venaticorum IV - the heart of the French Arm. It made for a very informal, small-crew attitude.

This new Anjou route with Maersk was a long-haul, straight to the edge of human space at Eta Bootis. Earth was 50 light years from here, and his home on Tirane further still. Far more faces, far more names, and lots of procedural things he wasn't yet used to - like the very presence of a spin-hab and multiple watches. On a courier, chances were you'd stay awake the whole trip - or nap while someone else flew.

Remi reached the transfer hatch down into the null-grav heart of the ship. He slowly groaned it open, being the first there, and nodded to his shipmates as they crowded around him. "Bonjour, all. Bienvenue."

One of the German crewmen, an old Bavarian named Adler, scoffed. "Ist Amerikan liner, Herr! We speak the American here."

A Welloner from Tirane, Glenn, scoffed at him. "The American, huh? Next they'll call it the Wellonese, I hope." 

"Oi, so long as we's gon get the New Scots as 'er own language, eh?" And then there was McCally, a New Scotland born-and-bred from northern Wellon. Formed from the British Tirane colonies of New Albion, New Scotland, and New Highland, and the Royal Arctic Territories, the Dominion of Wellington had slowly forged its own national psyche. Like the Canadians and Australians a half-millenium ago, disparate peoples had forged into a far-away star nation under the Windsor crown. In the modern era, ties of royalty meant more than even the time of Twilight.

It felt like half the ship was from Tirane - Friehafeners, Wellonese, even a payload tech from Provincia do Brasil. Remi himself was from Nouvelle Provence, the first French colony off of Earth. Growing up in the southlands, he remembered green fields and streaking starjets. That'd been before the wars. Before Central Asia had taken Mom, and Dad had been called up for Germany.

'Not so many of us were from Earth anymore,' Remi thought, as he glanced down the hatchway. He lurched forward and started his descent, stomach churning as he flung down the hatch's 'down' side. On the 'up', fellow crewmen with smiles on their faces tossed jabs and jeers. "Luck to you, fellas!" One American shouted.

"You too, blasted fooks! Nappin' for the funrun!" McCally shot back, chuckles abounding from half the crew. Remi was fairly sure the New Scotsman played up his accent for giggles - and it dropped when things got truly serious.

The 'Funrun' was the chaotic part of the journey - clearing the system shelf where the Stutterwarp slowed, reaching spaceport control, and likely getting inspected by anyone from the local coast guard to a full-sized Suffren Cruiser with a stick up its arse. The watch that had the Funrun usually handled all of it - including the likely visit by their friends from the Imperial Marine Spatiale.

The French Empire ruled the French Arm, moreso with iron now than ever before. After a disastrous Central Asian War, the nation was reorganized by coup into the 3rd Empire, overthrowing the 12th Republic. Ostensibly puppeteered by the Council of Deputies, Emperor Nicholas Ruffin's army suffered a terrible defeat in the War of German Reunification. Incensed, the Marine Spatiale has been brutally enforcing their mandated treaty rights - especially against non-French cargo carriers. 

Needless to say, Remi wasn't very fond of them. Unlike many French Spacers, he'd never served with the Spatiale, and his parents had died in the wars leading up to this new Empire. Still enough, the Merchants had instilled a certain lifestyle - a lifestyle that brought him to the edges of human space, in the heart of a Maersk Cargo Hauler.

C-Deck lay ahead as Remi emerged into the null-grav heart of the ship. spiraling flywheels lay behind hard grates, storing the energy that'd respin the habitats as soon as the rest of the crew rushed through the access tube. "Hola, Cuatro," met Remi's ears. A man with a thin mustache, tanned skin, and smiling eyes ducked out from behind one of C-Deck's life support columns - large pillars that held CO2 scrubbers, atmospheric pumps, and hydrolytic oxygen equipment.

"Bienvenue, Trois!" Remi said to 3rd Officer Sebastian Moralez. He stood in the dark slacks of the crew, smeared in oil and grease. His hands were practically black, and face covered momentarily in a towel as he tried to clean himself. "Hard day?" Remi asked.

"The worst, Rem. MHD nearly went flat on us from some kinda system load. Things are screwy with the electronics - and we lost E-Circuit's Terminal II in the bay for a few. Still stuttering even now. I was gonna replace the whole mounting - but I'd like you to look before I start wasting the budget."

Remi cracked a smile behind his flat nose. "Ahh, too many parties? Little too much, ah, imbibing?"

Moralez's spindly ectomorph form folded its arms. "You know you're invited to the blast down on Aurore - if you'll ever find the time with all the rewiring we're gonna need if E-II blows."

Remi chuckled as Moralez shook his head, clamboring up the accessway to the spin hab with little more than a 'good luck'. The Captain traded off with the XO, who nodded to Remi as the former clattered up the accessway.

"I hear there's been system troubles," Bellevieu, the XO, said. His tight-bearded face was ringed with concern. "At least five terminals have had trouble down in the cargo hold and telemetry in bay 2 is getting spotty. Let alone the word about E-II. We don't want to lose the E-Circuit." He flicked open his portacomp, showing Remi sites of damage as crewmen started arraying themselves for the pre-watch brief around the Life Support modules.

Remi nodded, "Sebastian said as much. Electrical is my specialty, so I should be able to isolate the problem. Keep contact, eh?" The 4th Officer tapped his headset, and the XO tapped his own with a smile.

"Thanks, Rem," he said, "Alright, people! Few hours 'till Eta Bootis, then on to Aurore. I want our manifests squared away if you're not flying - secure any loose cargo and clean this rustbucket. Last thing we need is an inspection by Corporate, let alone the Marine Spatiale. Hop to it, Mirabeau!" Gaspard was nothing if a speechmaker. He liked being XO - and had more pep to him than Captain Rastmussen, whose command of English was almost as bad as his management of a frontier starship.

The dozen crewmen in the access zone shouted affirmations in the gut of the access deck. Most headed 'up' toward the bridge decks, while Remi and several cargo handlers headed 'down'. Beyond the hatches to the spin system on C-Deck was D-Deck, containing an airlock, office, medbay, and two spare rooms for storage and utility. Many crewmen split off here - grabbing storage gear or shacking up in the office for manifest work. Beyond that was the Anjou-class' unfortunate hell: several hundred metres of empty cargo access tunnels. Spartan, square walls provided a dozen different entrances into the spherical cargo hold, terminating in his destination: the engineering bay.

Remi passed several pressure hatches per 'span' of the cargo spine, losing more and more handlers behind him with each hatchway, unt finally found himself in the heart of the cramped engineering bay. All around him were pieces of machinery: the Stutterwarp, the MHD, the thruster vent and, most unfortunately, the computer terminal within. The screen flickered and sizzled, clearly not working right, and dead pixels filled the screen when it wasn't freaking out.

Remi floated closer along rungs and velcroed into place, looking over the second terminal into E-Circuit. For those unfamiliar, E-Circuit aboard an Anjou-class consists of all Engineering-linked computer systems, including Helm, Bridge Engineering, Bridge Stutterwarp Control, and all system management interfaces in the sensor and life support modules, plus this E-II terminal in the engineering bay.

In this one terminus, all vital systems aboard were managed. If Terminal II was having trouble, the entire ship's acces to vital processes could fail - and at stutterwarp speeds in interstellar space, an uncontrolled drive was disaster, let alone losing management of life support or turbine output.

The question was, /how/ was this computer failing? Was it a systemwide burnout? Remi shut the hatch to Engineering with several clangs of the twisting knob. Beneath the terminal was a standard access panel, with four large screws. Nabbing a driver from his toolbelt, Remi quickly started undoing the panel - careful to tuck away every screw in a webbing pouch. Gently, he removed the access panel - letting it float in the air next to him as he knelt against the velcro flooring - eyes on his prize.

Before him were... intact components. No visible damage. He checked the interface - dead pixels and warbling. With a thumb, he depressed the radio control on his headset. "Bridge, Engineering."

"Hold oan, Engineering-" he recieved back from one of the bridge officers. Sounded like McCally, the New Scotsman. "-Now hear this, ya swamp wolves. Gofer spinup. Spinup, spinup, spinup. I sayagain, we're goin' grav in the spinners. Strap yerselves in. Spinup, Spinup, Spinup."

Remi winced, rubbing his spacer's stubble, as he quietly checked over the circuits. A small static charge sizzled off of /them/ and onto him. The screen flickered. "The hell-" Remi said, lancing his hand away from the boards. Electronics didn't zap people back - they got fried by static.

He slowly stood, turning to look at the Stutterwarp and MHD. A moment later, the lights flickered. "Bridge to Engineering-" McCally said, evidently running Engineers up there, "We're seein' a strange variant in tha MHD powa flow. Canya checkit?"

"Yeah. Any read on E-II's diagnostics? All the parts look okay, but the terminal-" Remi blinked, seeing stars for a brief moment as he looked around. Something bugged him in his gut, almost like a pinprick of nausea.

"Checkin nao," McCally said.

Remi felt... wrong. He'd had feelings like this before: when Mom had left, and even worse when Dad had. He'd had it before car accidents - before failing a test. It meant things just weren't right - and he had it bad even now.

He looked at the Stutterwarp - the inner core spinning at millions of RPMs. Unscraping from the floor velcro, he floated closer - grabbing hold of the diagnostic display and tapping through to the radiation display.

'-NULL-'

"Nul-" Remi blinked, tapping the intercom again, "McCally-! Check dosimetry on the Stutterwarp!"

"Dosimetry?!" McCally shouted, "Whateva for?! We ain't in system, we ain't-" he trailed off, voice still on the line. "Oh- oh god. Checkin' nao, XO, we gotta-"

The dosimeter had been outputting false data on the buildup inside the Tantalum coils. The Stutterwarp was beginning to output rads, and that meant...

"We've gotta shut it down, now. Call a tug - call something." Remi said, "No way of telling - but we're already getting dead pixels and I'm seeing stars." The Frenchman tugged at a flap on his right wrist, revealing his standard spacer dosage tab. It normally 

"Bridge rads over recommended levels, Stutterwarp- Sah! Officah Gaspard Sah! We've gotta problem!" McCally shouted over comms. Remi heard muffled noises as he slammed the cover of Terminal II back into place. His fingers rattled across the keyboard - trying to access Stutterwarp controls even through the static. No dice. 

Bellevieu's voice came in over the comm, "Veroix!" he shouted. Gaspard never used Remi's last name. "Ce que le baiser is going on down there?!"

"Stutterwarp's dosage recorder is off somehow, sir - and we're getting rad spikes frying E-II and my doser est noir. We may be near the discharge limit!"

"Limit?!" Gaspard shouted, "You think-"

"Sir-" Remi began, before the ship's radio line. Remi tapped headset twice, and didn't even get static. His hair stood on end as that terrible feeling got worse - and his eyes turned to the drive core. It began to rattle, ominously shaking as the interior coils started to glow. Sparks crackled along the edge of the spinner, rattling with violent energy. 

Remi covered his face and arms, pushing himself to a wall and velcroing in. Aboard the Anjou, the Engineering deck held most of the ship's very volatile hydrogen fuel. The core was critical - and that meant they were all dead anyway. The Tantalum would violently decay to Hafnium - spewing lethal radiation for several kilometers, through the ship and well beyond. More to the point - it'd explode. Exploding MHDs, Stutterwarps, and fuel

There was no time to get out of the engine compartment, let alone to the hab section. There was also no point - death by rads or death by life support dying. A louder rattle started in the heart of the spinning tantalum core - and the cramped engine compartment physically shook as its lights flickered. 

Remi felt his stomach churning. He'd never been a religious man. Maybe that had been a mistake, after all.

A loud series of bangs shook the stutterwarp drive - and Remi watched the MHD turbines start to buckle and shift as the motors and reactants began to react with charged particles. He saw sparkles in his vision, like stars racing past.

Then he felt the nausea - and squeezed his eyes tight as a final BANG roared through the compartment in a fiery flare. 

Everything went black.

[END Check: 6+ Awake After Explosion: 5]

[Roll for d6 Hours Unconscious: 2]

[PSI Roll = 3D6-3 (Heroic Array) = 12 (+2)]

[Rolls for Psi Powers in order of highest positive DM as per MT rulebook, gains Telepathy, Telekinesis, Clairvoyance. (I didn't write the rolls down. Standard DMs & -1 per attempt apply)]


	2. Staying Alive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With the Stutterwarp destroyed by a gravimetric discharge, Remi must try to stay alive in the dead hulk of his ship, the Mirabeau. With his fellow crewmen dead and power backups limited, the dangers in a dark ship abound.
> 
> Meanwhile, he begins to manifest strange new abilities and powers...

[END Temporary Damage -4, New Modifier -1]

4th Officer Remi Veroix startled awake in the depths of the ship - heart pounding, eyes blurring, and face covered in snot. He wiped it away, disgusted, and looked through the darkness of the engineering chamber. There was still atmosphere, at least.

In one corner, the Stutterwarp drive spun lazily. Sparks scraped across its guardian truss over the tantalum coils, spewing flickering sparks that floated gently in Zero-G. E-II fizzled in the corner, the access panel torn away in what looked to be a powerful explosion. Curiously, Remi was unharmed. Half the pixels on the screens were dead - and the display was a garbled mess of error messages. Behind him, the MHD had a half-dozen missing pipes and a damaged injector letting out bulbs of something odd.

The little globs of light were lit by the flying sparks - liquid.

[EDU 4+ = 4 -> Recognizes the Liquid]

Liquid... Hydrogen! Remi gasped, grasping for his fire extinguisher tucked along the side of the MHD. He quickly spewed the retardant, and grunted as he struck the wall behind him from the device's force. The gummed-up works of the stutterwarp crackled and fizzled, finally ceasing. Firefighting foam joined the hydrogen bubbles in the dark.

He quickly jangled in his pockets, looking for an emergency flashlight [6+ - 6, has his flashlight], and removed one from a web pocket. He flicked it on, surveying the compartment. Dozens of hydrogen globs had filled the air of the engineering compartment, mixed now with the massive spiral of firefighting foam.

Oddly, despite his stomach feeling like shit and head nearly exploding, he was alive. That was impossible- the rads alone would've killed him, let alone the explosion that seemed to have torn up the compartment. [INT+Recon 6+= 8+1 =9 -> Spots damage from the explosion.]

All across the corner where he'd been laying, Remi found a half-dozen shards of metal embedded in the wall. He reached out toward one [PSI+Telekinesis 8+ = 6 -> Fails] and didn't seem to find a good reason it'd gotten there. The spray pattern was practically perfect to avoid goring him. That couldn't have been a coincidence - especially while knocked out.

Still, it was time to clean the mess. Grabbing a clean-kit full of rags from his pocket, he slowly began soaking each in the hydrogen bubbles. He knew that he needed to fix the MHD - otherwise more hydrogen would leak out. [EDU+Mechanic 6+ = 6 -> Fixes Hydrogen Leak] and quickly began taping rags over the broken piping. He wasn't about to start welding pipes into place with hydrogen - and the tools were up by the bridge besides.

'The Bridge!' Remi thought, as he tossed the ruined hydrogen-soaked rags in a cleanup container, he turned toward the hatch above him. "God, they might be alive if I am, but none have come for me." As he finished securing the disposal container, he quickly did a final once-over of the bay [EDU+Engineer, +4 for Ship Knowledge, 10+ = 19] and found several dozen hard cuts in the fuel bladder walls that surrounded the engineering compartment. Debris has sliced microholes in the hull of the engineering bay, allowing globs of hydrogen fuel to essentially sit and slowly expand. With a heavy push on each, Remi

Grabbing more Stikit kits from his webbing and cracking their adhesive surfaces, he quickly started sealing them all. Ten minutes later, the compartment was sealed. With a gentle twist, Remi heaved open the hatch. Beyond, darkness reigned. Only a handful of emergency lights flickered. With gentle presses along the cargo spine's ladders, he slowly approached the habitable decks. 

As Remi pressed open the final spine compartment before D-Deck, he found one man dead. 

Glenn, the other Welloner besides McCally, had a glazed look and an almost yellow appearance. His face was puffed up, and skin mottled. One half of his face and arms were burnt - the ones no-doubt facing the core when the radiation was going off.

[PSI+Clairvoyance 6+ = 7+2 = 9 -> Develops Deadsight, Can see Pre-Death Memories of bodies.]

Remi touched him and winced as something flowed through him. It flared through his mind like a flare of heat: a memory, but it wasn't his.

[BANG. "What the-" Glenn said, glancing down the hatchway. Something flared suddenly, and he screamed as his skin caught fire. His stomach lurched and his arms started twitching, and in that moment he saw nothing but black as the lights gave out - and so did he.]

The Frenchman flinched as he recoiled his hand, looking over Glenn's body with a mixture of terror and fascination. He pressed off the wall, away from Glenn, and pushed past. "Mon dieu..." 

As Remi clanged open the hatches past D-Deck and onto C, he quickly realized that the access tubes were still spiraling around the center. The Gyros were quiet, meaning the actual spin hab's emergency brakes hadn't engaged. Nobody had found the time - or nobody had made it. He was almost afraid to head to the B or A deck - where he'd no doubt find the rest of his watch.

Remi also saw that the life support systems were physically flagging but still operational. He flicked open his diagnostic portacomp and enabled it, hoping to get a better read on the ship's situation.

[Portacomp Functional 10+: 10! -> It's shitty but works.]

The screen might've been flickering, and the pixels were dead all over the place, but Remi managed to plug his computer into one of the four life support columns in the spinhab access deck. From there, he had access to most ship systems via E-Circuit (which had survived despite errors in E-II), and quickly executed a check of primary computer functions.

[Program: Stutterwarp/B 10+: 12 -> Working.]

[Program: Library 10+: 7 -> Failed.] 

[Program: Manoeuver/0 10+: 5 -> Failed.]

Remi shouted a curse, slamming the column he was connected to with a mad grunt. He quickly switched to looking over the readouts from the bridge: most of the hard stuff had concentrated in the lower decks, saving the bridge computers and the nav room at the every least. Everything below, including the ship offices and EVA Airlock controls, were progressively failing. Even the Utility Room printer was offline, depriving him of his usual spare part source.

He'd have a hard time rewiring everything with limited spares and buggy software. First, he knew, he'd need to do something else: clear out the ship. It'd be hard to work with his friends floating nearby. Most of the cargo spine had large amounts of netting for spare pressure cargo. It wasn't a perfect place - but the actual cargo bay was cavernous and hard to navigate, especially if radiation or explosion may have damaged seals in the section. He'd leave the spin habs rotating, for now - as much as it pained him to leave his crewmates up there.

[Clear Zero-G zones of Dead Bodies: d6 hours - 6]

Slowly, methodically, Remi had to go compartment-by-compartment, prying his fellow crewmen from the upper decks. Many had terrible radiation burns. As he did so, the 4th Officer suffered more of those disturbing visions. Each was a hot-flash, a memory of the person's death intermingled with thoughts and feelings.

Part of why it took so long was simple coping with each person's sudden doom. It was an out-of-body hell. After arranging the bodies in the netting of the cargo spine to engineering and covering them with spare tarpaulin, the hard part began: saving himself.

With the Library and Maneuver systems down, he'd need to rely almost entirely on manually piloting the Mirabeau. Thankfully, with stutterwarp systems active, he'd at least be able to manage the throttle if he could assess the reactor.

That was /if/ the Stutterwarp remained intact. Rads typically came from a decay to Hafnium - but the ship's geiger counter was dying. With a quick check of his wrist flap, Remi's eyes rose in suprise. Where once it'd been a saturated black-lethal radiation dosage, the square was now solid white - no rads at all. "Putain de merde?" Remi mouthed, quietly 

Slowly descending the graveyard in the spine of his ship, Remi arrived back in the ruins of the engineering bay. Armed with spare lights procured from utility stockroom, he spent a minute unscrewing several bulbs and replacing them - and what remained was a full view of the engineering bay's interior. 

He needed a solution to getting the MHD functional - before the capacitors and batteries died out shipwide and killed him quietly.

[EDU+Engineering to solve fixing the MHD: 8+ = 9]

Without the Library, he had only background knowledge on how to fix a power plant - through his duties as engineer, he handled minor damages to things that weren't his specialty simply enough. His best bet was to purge the lines with inert gas, freeing out shipboard hydrogen and allowing him to weld damaged piping back into place. After that, rewiring the main control systems would work well enough

It wasn't a perfect plan - no plan was. It might just, however, give him a chance to reach Aurore. From there, the Marine Spatiale or any other national group could render aid. The problem was time - time, and getting power to call for help.

[Time to Fix The MHD - d6*10 Hours = 40]

[Fixing the MHD, EDU+Engineering 10+ = 8]

After over a day, the lights went out. Shipboard batteries went first, and then Remi's portable lights died. The bodies were starting to smell, and he'd slept in the ruins of a crew quarters in a velcro hammock. To say that Remi's morale was low would be an understatement. Only the subtle hum of the spin habitats on their tracks gave him any stimulation.

During a difficult pipe placement in the pitch dark, Remi finally realized he was quite doomed. Barring a miracle, he knew, he'd die on this crap heap. Nitrogen and CO2 would flood the air - if he didn't starve or run out of water first in the pitch black. The MHD was a mess of broken parts and damaged screens, now unpowered and being repaired solely by his hands and spatial awareness.

[PSI+Clairvoyance 10+: 8 -> Fails to develop Darksight]

[PSI+Telekinesis 10+: 7 -> Fails to develop Telekinetic Touch]

[PSI+Telepathy 10+: 12 -> Develops Psibeacon, Draws People to Him]

As he sat in the dark, slamming a fist against the velcro walls of the bay, he cried. He was doomed, out here, only a handful of hours from Eta Bootis. On the bridge, he could see the star out the window - the only light for billions of miles.

Four hours of darkness passed. 

[PSI+Clairvoyance 10+: 9 -> Fails to develop Prescience]

[PSI+Telepathy 10+: 9 -> Fails to develop Mind Detection] 

The Frenchman heard it first when a loud CLANG reverberated through the hull, something brutal and violent. He twisted toward what he knew was the 'roof' of the room he'd bunkered up in - the Crew Lounge A. With a gentle fist, he whapped on his emergency light.

[PSI+Telekinesis 10+: 2 -> Fails to develop Bioelectrics] 

No dice as he slowly opened the doorway to the Bridge's hatchway- and found a brilliant light shining in his face. A voice screamed out through a voice modulator, dark and growling: "HANDS!" in English. A half-dozen lights flared over Remi as he put up his hands, blue-uniformed soldiers in Combat P-Suits clamboring into the heart of the bridge. Blue starfields and red-white stripes on their shoulders identified them as Americans, armed to the teeth with laser rifles.

"What happened here?! What's your name?!" One shouted - leading the pack with his light shining on Remi's face.

"R-Remi! Remi Veroix! Stutterwarp discharge killed everyone! I work for Maersk Shipping!" In that moment, Remi felt a terror he hadn't felt in a long time - guns trained on his head, floating free in the doorway to the Bridge's crawlway. Quietly, the soldier cuffed Remi and hauled him down onto B-Deck, while soldiers charged into the circular bridge with weapons up.

In the dark of the Mirabeau's crew lounge on B-Deck, where Remi had slept for only a few hours since the incident, two troopers quietly shoved him into a chair, training their weapons on him as he velcroed to the floor. Squawking voices called out their identity as troopers descended the ship, securing it room-by-room. Remi sat in silence, his heart beating rapidly, until something must've come in over the Navy men's comms. The troopers tightened their grip on their weapons and focused them tighter on Remi's person.

'They've probably found them,' Remi thought, as the troopers grabbed him and shoved him up the airlock. Ahead lay a plastic tube, with lights trained on it. Past that, the grey hulk of a warship floated in the void, running lights illuminating its surface as laser weapons pointed toward Remi's little Anjou.

All the while, he wondered - how had they found him? Mirabeau was in interstellar space, unlikely to be declared missing for days or weeks. Like so many other discharges, it'd be found on the route by a passing freighter in a few decades, corpses rotten and dead. The chances of an American detecting even a known missing ship were low. Blind luck? Maybe a little bit of faith? Remi wasn't sure what to believe.

The ship ahead was big and boxy. 'CALVIN MORRISON' was stamped in military stenciling on the side, with a big American flag. He'd seen this type before in magazines and on newspapers: the Kennedy-class Fast Missile Carrier. It carried a full platoon of elite troops, dozens of huge missiles slung off the sides, and in the two bays far more than that. Bristling with turrets that quietly actuated away from the Mirabeau, Remi Veroix realized he was in far more trouble than a near death experience. 'I look like I killed them,' Remi thought, 'Watch Engineer- Terminal-II goes offline- stutterwarp core overloads?' He shivered as the airlock cycled onto the Calvin Morrison, revealing a cargo bay full of EVA-suited American Space Force astronauts in drab pressure suits. Golden visors glanced at Remi in silence, as the two soldiers escorting him halted.

Two sailors clambored down the hatch - one with an air of authority around him. A stick in his mouth looked juicy - some form of exotic stimstick that gave him the appearance of a chewing cow. Rather than the usual astronaut's snoopy, the man wore a simple headset with crossbar, mic boom over his lips opposite the chewstick. "Petty Officer," the man said, 'JESSUP' stenciled on his nameplate. Remi tried to recognize the man's rank.

[EDU 8+: 8 -> Remi recognizes the Captain's rank, if barely.]

Colonel. He was a full-bird Colonel, and commander of this USSF warship, most likely. "Is this the source of... the event?"

"We think it's him, sir-" One of the American sailors said, "We at Team 4 haven't dealt with anything like this in SEAL service. I've seen 'Tex hacking, but..." SEALs? As in SEAL Commandoes? Remi was almost in awe he'd just been captured by Special Forces. "-he's the only one alive. Ship's crew are all dead. Stutterwarp's destroyed. MHD was nearly fried - we found parts everywhere. Frenchie must've been trying to fix it."

"Oui-" Remi said, interrupting, "-I was until the power gave out. Would've taken-"

"Shut up," one of the other SEALs said, elbowing Remi with his pressure suit, "As far as we know, whatever drew us to this ship killed everyone- Tantalum explosion or not!"

The Captain turned to the other SEAL. "Hit a prisoner again and I'll have you court-martialled. Take him to B1 Med and check him out. Figure out what made him call us here. I want the rest of you to doublesweep the ship - then we'll kick it on to Aurore after salvage and check out the blackout."

"Blackout?" Remi said.

"Haven't you heard?" Colonel Jessup said, "Aurore comms are dead. French ship fled the system claiming aliens blew the hell out of their orbital fleet. We're flying in to check it out."

"Oui," Remi nodded - Aliens?!

[Clairvoyance 4+: 6 -> Premonition]

[An ugly thing. Big, with a hulking carapace and beetle-like pincers and downy hairs across its chitonous arms and legs. It lumbers almost dumbly - before it's hit with a rock. In moments, it turns from ungainly beast into screeching berserker - tossing rocks and striking out violently.]

Remi shook as the two SEALs shouted through their voiceboxes at him. "I'm okay, okay!" Remi shouted out, "Been having... dreams."

Jessup nodded, "That's what we're worried about. Entire ship's been having daydreams and urges - callin' the crew to your ship. They just stopped as we docked. Figure you might have somethin' to do with that?"

Remi shook his head. "I do not know. There is much today I cannot explain." Jessup nodded at that, motioning to the two sailors that slowly clambored up a hatchway.

Slowly, the SEALs usher him to a medical bay - where inside an astronaut of the US Space Force sat with sterile green gloves, a drab green uniform, and a snoopy cap of white and black. "Hello there!" he said, "I'm Senior Astronaut Matthews. Can you tell me what happened?" He asked, as most of the SEALs left. One remained with his weapon at ease, regarding Remi warily.

Remi winced. "I was down in the reactor room. I am a Maersk Engine Tech - and I realized there were signs of radiation damage to a terminal. Slowly, I began feeling... nausea? Yeah? Then the reactor exploded - I must've been out hours. Everyone aboard had rad burns, but I was fine except for feeling woozy. And getting... flashes."

"Flashes?" The Astronaut asked, slowly checking Remi over as he doffed the Frenchman's jacket, webbing, and jumpsuit. His skin was unburnt, body unblackened. A quick sweep of the Geiger suggested no external radiation charge, nor sustained charge inside the Mirabeau. Whatever had happened left as soon as it had happened.

"Yes, like... memories."

"You mean like, EM Sensitivity? Cortex Hacking? I've seen it on the vids." Matthews asked, flicking a light in Remi's eyes and watching the pupils constrict normally.

"Similar. They were dead - and then just now when Colonel spoke in the airlock bay. Something about Aliens? I saw one."

"Saw one?" Matthews said, furrowing his brow. "Sounds a little-"

"-Crazy," Remi finished. He shook his head. "I've been working in the dark too long," the Frenchman said, "Ship's a mess. I don't know if you can get it running again without a Tuner and a whole shipyard. Tantalum's probably wrecked by now."

"Not to mention your crewmates?" Matthews said.

Remi blinked. Faces and thoughts flashed by. Memories of a dozen copies - each the same thing from another place, with another mind, a different sight.

"It terrifies me," Remi finally said. Matthews nodded, choosing silence over words of comfort.

He shivered as the Astronaut finished his work, letting Remi relax. The cuffs on his hands chafed as he floated in null-grav, only for a loud pang to resound through the hull. They were declamping - leaving the Mirabeau behind. Remi frowned, waiting a few minutes as the hatchway opened. Colonel Jessup and a pair of SEALs floated in - weapons at ease. "Alright, kid - we've checked out your ship.Whatever happened, the decayed hafnium and burns are the only signs of rad damage. The Tantalum coil on your ship's dead - but an overhaul could get that thing running again. We'll be marking it and giving a full report for you to take to Maersk."

The Colonel set himself on one of the two beds in the medroom - above, bags of med supplies coated the walls, while in the corner prep tables of velcro and terminals staffed Senior Astronaut Matthews with a work station. The SA slowly filled out an assessment of Veroix as Jessup spoke, chewing on his Stimstick. 

"I've pulled your personnel file from the Cap's database. Good kid. 4th Officer, a house back on Tirane. Tight-knit with the crew. Dunno quite what's going on with you - but every man on this ship'll attest to an odd feeling demanding we come here. We did - now it's gone - and we have you."

Remi nodded. Something to do with his visions? Matthews looked up from logging his assessment, squinting at the Frenchman. "Strange," Remi said, "You think it might've had to do with me?"

"Has to. I've seen weird things out here, in space. Killer flying birds made of swords. People with crystal skin and three eyelids. Weird Japanese mermaid girls off of Hokkaido living in undersea cities. For now, we'll keep you aboard - at least until we assess Aurore. You ain't headed anywhere, so I'm not overly concerned about keeping you cuffed. Don't snoop - follow directions from the crew - and try to see what's what."

Remi blinked behind his own snoopy cap, glancing at his cuffs. "What do I do while I am here?"

"Make yourself useful, I suspect. Ship's Library is yours - read up on whatever's going on - as well as a free nap in the Ready Room. We'll toss a tethercot in there for you to sleep in the Null-G. Staterooms are booked up, I'm afraid. I'll keep you busy in the spinhab when on-shift, twelves and twelves, cleaning and doing routine electrics maintenance. Unsecure systems only. The SEALs are gonna take off your cuffs, and they'll keep an eye on you. Don't take it personal."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Below is Remi's CS, rolled using the lifepath system from Mongoose Traveller and the 2300AD Sourcebook's variant rules. Minor edits are made from time to time here.
> 
> Remi Delroix
> 
> Nationality: French  
> Homeworld: Nouvelle Provence (Tirane/Core)  
> Body Type: Normal  
> Focus: Spades (Exploration & Knowledge)
> 
> =Stats=  
> Str: 9 (+1)  
> Dex: 9 (+1)  
> End: 8 (0) TEMP DAMAGE -4 (-1)  
> Int: 6 (0)  
> Edu: 9 (+1)  
> Soc: 4 (-1)  
> Psi: 14 (+2)
> 
> \----Skills----  
> =Educational=  
> \- French 0  
> \- English 0  
> \- Language 0  
> \- Science (History) 0  
> \- Advocate 1
> 
> =Intellectual=  
> \- Admin 0  
> \- Informatics 1  
> \- Deception 1  
> \- Diplomat 1  
> \- Investigate 1  
> \- Broker 2  
> \- Steward 0  
> \- Persuade 2  
> \- Streetwise 1  
> \- Carouse 0
> 
> =Technical=  
> \- Engineer (Electronics) 3  
> \- Mechanic 1  
> \- Drive (Wheeled) 0  
> \- Drive (Tracked) 0  
> \- Gun Combat (Slug Rifle) 1  
> \- Pilot (Fixed Wing) 2  
> \- EVA Suit 0
> 
> =Psionics=  
> Telepathy 0  
> \- Psibeacon
> 
> Clairvoyance 0  
> \- Deadsight
> 
> Telekinesis 0  
> \- Baseline
> 
> =Advantages=  
> \- Property = Small Home in Nouvelle Provence, when part of B Crew  
> \- Art (Hobby)  
> \- Contact  
> \- Sixth Sense  
> \- Ally
> 
> =Disadvantages=  
> \- Addiction (Maintenance)  
> \- Dark Secret/1 (Psionic by Crew Death)
> 
> =Career & Terms=  
> \- 1st: Merchants (Merchant Marine) 0->1 (Dex +1, Advanced Education Event +1 to two skills = Pilot/Engineer)  
> \- 2nd: Merchants (Merchant Marine) 1->2 (Mechanic, +1 Str, Make a Friend = Ally + Carouse)  
> \- 3rd: Merchants (Merchant Marine) 2->2 (Admin, Legal trouble: Investigate 1)
> 
> =Mustering Benefits=  
> 1: Lv5,000  
> 2: +1 Int  
> 3: Weapon -> Rifle (Type TBD)  
> 4: +1 Int
> 
> =Inventory=  
> Lv2550  
> \- Portacomp, Computer/4  
> \- Mul-T-Tool, All Sizes  
> \- Basic Tool Kit


	3. Second Bootis - The Battle of Aurore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remi, now a civilian cooped up aboard a military vessel, keep himself busy to avoid thoughts about his dead crews' last moments.
> 
> As the U.S.S. Calvin Morrison enters the Eta Bootis system, however, our story pans out to something entirely different - the struggle of an American warship to face down three enemy battleships - and win the day.

**1d6 (5) Hours Later...**

The sautering iron in Remi's hand fidgeted as he gently finished fixing the circuit board. A few additional prongs later, and it was fixed. He fed it back into the television with a few moments of screwdriving, and the screen flickered on to the cheers of assembled off-duty crewmen.

On-screen, videos of the American desert colony of Ellis filled the screens. Apparently a new subterranian city, Almurry Bay, was undergoing its formal grand opening. Considering their distance down the French Arm, it'd happened months ago.

Still - news was news, even if it was a backlog. Remi watched with interest - his own English struggling to keep up with the fast-paced reporting style of the Core Systems. Across the mess deck of the Morrison, crewmen chatted and jiggered amid velcro chairs and space dinners. At a pleasant .2G, Remi felt alive after more than a full day in null-grav.

The Frenchman took his seat in near the foot of the table, away from most of the Americans. They regarded him silently, happy to have their television fixed, but conflicted over their call to the Mirabeau. Remi doffed his snoopy, running a hand through dark hair, and stared with that kind of hollowness you found on a battlefield. Even as he enjoyed fixing and tinkering from his time as a boy, it didn't have the same lustre. Not anymore.

A few feet away, men laughed, while he remembered the bodies, the faces. The corpses.

[Telekinesis 10+: 13 - Standard Manipulation]

As his thoughts rattled through his mind, a shudder went through the table, rattling plates and loose materials, knocking others loose from their velcro on the tabletop. The crew glanced around amid shouts, until Remi snapped away from his reverie. One by one, they focused on him.

The shuddering stopped as Remi took a deep breath realizing what he'd done. He'd... shaken it all. At once. He looked to the Americans, who slowly turned their heads in silence before returning to their conversations, hushed and quiet now.

He sat in silence for awhile until one astronaut took a saet, floor scraping as he moved a chair off its latches and seated it back into the velcro decking. "Howdy," the man said, wearing the stripes of an American Space Force Master Sergeant. His fellow crewmen shared confused glances at their Sergeant's choice of seating - next to the freak that'd fucked with their heads and plates alike.

"Hello," Remi said. They sat in momentary silence.

The man nodded, "Pretty weird what happened on your ship, huh?" he finally said after a moment's peace.

"I would say so, Sergeant-Chef. I miss my friends - we'd been together for years." Remi whispered, eyes wistful.

The American idly chewed on a stick - looking like a Tirania Chemweed not unlike Colonel Jessup's Stimstick. The stuff was invigorating, sold all across the Core, and even grew at a profit on Earth despite quarantine regulations prohibiting such growth. It gave him the appearance of a skinny cow on the farmfield, chewing the cud.

"I'm sorry," the man said. "Name's Dawes. Rupert Dawes. Hear you're an Electrics boy."

"Yes," Remi said, dark eyes looking over the American and his floppy cap. The latter grabbed out his chewstick, and pointed it at the television.

"Fine work," Dawes said, "If shit gets rough, I don't care what the Cap says. All this talk about Aliens and weird table shiftin' got the crew spooked, especially after what some of 'em saw on your boat. You gotta good head, kid - I'm hauling your ass to engines if stuff goes down. Fixin' an entire MHD without the quals in the dark? Most folks wouldn't even know where to start. I saw your handywork - half-done before the lights went out."

Remi nodded, receding slightly into his jacket at the memory. He was far more concerned with all the bodies Dawes no-doubt saw on his descent. The American seemed no worse for wear - perhaps a regular member of inspection and boarding crews. "Do you really think Aurore is so dangerous? How many ships did the Spatiale lose?" Remi finally asked.

Dawes frowned, stopping the chew of his chemweed. "At least four - an Anconit, a Fantasque, and a pair of Bonaparte fighters. Another Anconit took on a third Bonny in her cargo and fled system. Barely made the Krauts at Hochbaden."

Anconits and Fantasques were lighter ships - but losing two and a pair of fighters was bad business. Rare were major fleet battles to begin with - and not since the Central Asian War had open war come to the stars at all. Remi had lost his mother aboard a small exploratory cruiser then - her ship sunk by Manchurian Raiders.

Remi frowned. "It will be bad, then."

"We're fast," Dawes said, "A lot faster than any of those ships, with a shitload of SIMs. Nobody's taking down the Morrison while I'm runnin' the plant. Right boys?!"

A loud shout went up from his fellow crewmen. Remi chuckled as Dawes passed his coffee-bag over. "Drink up, Kid. We're almost there-"

As he spoke, a sudden alarm went through the ship, and the lights above turned red in a staggering flicker from the mess toward the access hatches. Over the intercom, voices blared with a metallic twang: "General Quarters! General Quarters! All shifts man your combat stations! Say again, General Quarters! General Quarters! All shifts man your combat stations! Rig for Red across the ship! Rig for Red across the ship! Spindown, Spindown, Spindown."

Remi felt his heart lurch as he remembered the dark of the Mirabeau. With a free hand, he set his chair straps as spindown alarms crashed through the intercom. Crewmen grabbed their food and equipment and started sealing it down to the velcro as deceleration bracketed the Morrison's Spin Habs, floating them all into Zero-G.

Remi unstrapped and bounded, grabbing hold of a ceiling handle as his crewmates rushed to their quarters. Dressed in his old workman's gear, Remi still had most of his tools and ancillary web gear. Enough to be of use. In a nearby locker, Dawes was already handing out PSuits, and threw a skintight Civvy one at Remi. "Suit up, kid!"

Out of a few rooms in the hallway stepped the blue-suited SEALs, one or two shooting Remi looks of disdain behind their unpolarized masks. Dawes floated up next to the Frenchman, nodding. "Good luck, Kid - we'll need some of yours to make it through this shitstorm. Take this-" the American said, handing off a small portacomp chip, "-it'll patch you into Engineering's comms. If shit goes down and we start losing electrics, fuck the rules - you're an engineer. Got me?"

Remi blinked as Dawes shot off toward the access hatch - disappearing with dozens of half-ready crewmen down the hatches. He quietly doffed his webs and belt, jacket too, and threw on the taut skinsuit. The pressure helmet sealed around his head, snoopy on inside, and he wired them all together before plugging into the life support pack in the small of his back and sealing the assembly.

In that handful of heartbeats, he was alone - the only man in the entire spinner capsule. His breath fogged the mask as the pressure fan started whirring.

He plugged in the chip to his portacomp, now sleeved in the PSuit's wrist pocket and listened through his snoopy cap. Jessup's voice echoed: "All hands - we're entering Aurore space. We've got multiple grav contacts - big bastards. At this time, consider alien contact probable. We're going to buzz in at speed and probably engage. Remember your training, do your job, and we'll get through this. SEALs - head to the landers and get suited up, I may have one of your teams make the drop - check imaging in briefing. We'll need to get combat tracks so drones need to launch ASAP. Hop to it, Morrison! Jessup out!"

For Remi, the battle was a far away thing.

**==**

**The Battle of Second Bootis - "The Shot That Saved Aurore"**

When the U.S.S. Calvin Morrison arrived at Eta Bootis, Colonel Alvin Jessup feared the worst. In the span of a few hours, the entire Ukranian Squadron and several French Frigates had been torn to utter shreds, and the MSIF was covering up the loss of a Suffren-class Cruiser to enemy fire. The First Battle of Eta Bootis had been a disaster.

The Suffrens were the ultimate warships - though the Bismarck and Richelieu-class Ships were the true 'Ships of the Line', it was the Suffren-class Cruiser that trawled most of known space, while behemoths sat in drydock around Earth. Capable of independent operations and battalion-strength force deployments, the Suffrens were the hallmarks of French military operations and hegemony on the French Arm.

If the French lost a Suffren, with their massive missile loads and huge armor complement, the Calvin Morrison didn't stand a chance.

As the Morrison closed on the French Colony, though, they found themselves lucky: only three enemy ships were on gravity scanners, distorting space as their stutterwarps idled around Aurore. A tidally locked world of fire and ice, the Franco-Ukranian world was frozen in orbit of the Brown Dwarf Tithonius, a massive flaming gas giant that provided the heat that kept parts of Aurore habitable.

On one side, the Hotback, Aurore faced Tithonius. On the other, the Ice Cap, Aurore was too far for heat to reach. While day and night came in the form of Eta Bootis A's glowing form, that sun didn't provide much in terms of heat. On your average day, due to Tithonius Aurore's surface could be subject to a sudden and brutal shift in tides from North to South, resulting in massive daily tsunamis that had claimed the lives of the first Auroran surveyors.

They said that Aurore was out to kill you, from the Creeps - walking unyielding carpets that spat acid and were content to smother you and dissolve every scrap of skin you had - to the very soil, which was Dextro-based. Nothing edible grew on Aurore - you had to import Earth-soil and kill all the Auroran flora in the process. Even the grass was out for your legs, a strange mossy substance that had a mind of its own.

Still, millions of humans called it home - be it in the colony of Tanstaafl (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch - Once a Corporate haven, now wholly independent), the French colony of Aurore (for which Aurore was named) and the Ukranian Colony of Novy Kiev, one of the few colonies that nation had.

That all had been before these aliens, whoever they were, had dropped a fistful of hell on the already inhospitable rock. Radiological sensors showed huge plumes of fallout near cities and military installations. Imaging showed ruined spaceports and power receivers from kinetic deadfall weapons. Of the handful of millions that once called Aurore home, Colonel Jessup suspected there were far less now.

In addition to three massive 300 Megawatt stutterwarp signatures, those of the enemy ships, the Morrison's sensor crews detected a dozen small spacecraft entering the atmosphere - some fast, like dead falling aeroshells, and others controlled by thrusters. Landers. The Aliens weren't just nuking the place - they were invading. Human beings were facing an unknown alien threat - lightly armed, barely equipped, and likely outmatched. Jessup knew a quick recce wasn't in order here: he had a chance to fight these three alien warships, clear orbit, and give those colonists some support by fire.

The Tactical Action Center of the Morrison was cramped as all hell. Consoles ringed a central holographic display, next to which Colonel Jessup was velcroed. With a hiss, Jessup removed his helmet, letting it float. He took out a stimstick, tossing his old one away in the null-grav, and bit into another one with a small hiss. He adjusted his headset, and sealed his helmet back on.

The Colonel's voice piped into every helmet speaker and communications cap aboard the Morrison: "All hands - we're entering Aurore space. We've got multiple grav contacts - big bastards. At this time, consider alien contact probable. These alien bastards have nuked Aurore, killed Frenchies and Ukes, and they won't stop here. Our aim is to save whoever's left, and make these alien fucks pay. Remember your training, do your job, and we'll get through this. SEALs - head to the landers and get suited up, I may have one of your teams make the drop - check imaging in the briefing bay. We'll need to get combat tracks so drones need to launch ASAP. Hop to it, Morrison! Jessup out!"

With a flick of his chest radio, Jessup switched off the shipwide 1/MC, and onto the 2/TAC channel. His helmet visor flashed as data displayed along the bottom in a crawlbar. In the middle of TAC the holographic display whirred to life and started plotting contacts. At one end was Tithonius - the big red ball that kept Aurore warm. In the middle was Aurore, the hellworld that the French and Ukranians called home. To the other end was the Morrison - closing in on three huge red blips. The Aliens, honest-to-god evil aliens. It was something out of science fiction.

"Designate ships - Master One through Master Three," The Sensor Chief ordered. In moments, One, Two, and Three appeared over his targets - and Jessup appraised them.

"Very good - once we've got drones out, I want them to lurch past us while we hold distance. Targeting locks are paramount. Once we have lock, we'll drop four fish and probe their PD arrays and try to get a hit," Jessup said. In a modern space environment, you needed every second to prepare - so Space Force commanders often pre-ordered crewmen.

The holoboard slowly moved as the enemy ships closed, the lead one firing six small missiles that flitted forwards toward the Morrison. They were fast, but not fast enough. Though hard to tell due to similar wattages and profiles, Drones could be detected without a proper sensor scan by their 360 degree sensor pattern. Missiles typically only had a 60-degree arc from the nose both vertical and horizontal.

"Comm Officer - signals? Anything?" Jessup asked.

A helmet turned to him, her voice squawking through the radio: "I have... something, sir, but it's not Human."

"Pipe it," Jessup said.

The woman pressed a few buttons. "Kloorka! Zakran kappa! Lkita zan kloorka! KAPPA! KAPPA!" Jessup frowned as he chewed the stimstick behind his faceplate. The alien voice was gutteral, flanging, almost like a chitter. They had no intel on what they looked like, or what they wanted - but Jessup had trained for this more than once. 'Hostile First Contact' was a joke at the Spaceforce Academy at L4, something every damned first-year asked about.

'Shut up, kid-' the upperclassmen would say, '-it's about as likely as getting play on your first shoreside holiday.' There were remarkably few books on the subject - every alien species Humanity had encountered before were either indifferent or friendly. These aliens? Not so much. Every other species was at least resonable, had made efforts to converse and make peaceful contact. Sure, the Pentapods may have vivisected a guy - but they thought that was a 'polite trade' when they'd sent two of their people. They'd made amends, such as they were.

None had started out openly hostile - and the idea that this new alien force charged through and defeated the best ships of the French? That scared people - scared the President of the United States so much he ordered an entire platoon of SEALs and one of only three top-tier Kennedy missile cruisers off of shakedown.

Jessup wasn't usually one to question orders. 'Recon Aurore. Assess the Alien Threat. Prosecute with full authority. Nuclear authorization.' Those had been the terse commands broadcast to Jessup mid-maneuvers in Jovian orbit. To take his ship off of pre-commissioning and drop it straight into the battle? That was either confidence, or desperation.

The Morrison had barely managed to take on a full missile load, and it'd been two weeks to reach the frontier - weeks where the other commanders had sat on their laurels in Hochbaden, French Amiral Charlons arguing with Ukranian Vice Admiral Borodin and the German Captain Einheldt.

Jessup had spent barely fifteen minutes getting a sitrep on vidcom with his counterparts before he cut the line. He wasn't about to sit around while the Europeans let their own people die. Now, he was face-first with the implacable enemy, moments from hell - distracted only by that strange feeling he'd felt before they picked up that Frenchman.

It wasn't completely gone. Almost like... something was clearing his head, actually.

[Remi: Psi+Clairvoyance 10+ to gain BATTLE INFLUENCE: 11+2/13 Success - See Chapter Notes]

Jessup focused back on the tacmap, watching as the six enemy missiles closed. His own drones entered a weaving pattern, closing on the slower alien warships. Sensor data started streaming in over tight beams of focused light. One-by-one, every enemy warship was scanned in by the HD-50s - providing locks rather easily in the end. "Excellent work, Sensors - we've got targeting solutions. I want our missiles out and closing. Let's twist around and keep abreast of those enemy missiles - I don't want to chance a detection."

"Aye, sir-" The Weapons Officer said. He removed a key from his neck, pressing it into a console, and turned it. He looked to a fellow officer as that man did the same, allowing them both to open a clear glass case. Each man put a hand over the red button. "Arming 1. 3, 2, 1-" Both men pressed. They repeated three times on the TAC circuit. "Weapons armed, Colonel, ready to deploy the missiles."

"Deploy," Jessup ordered, listening to loud thwumps through the hull as pressurized tubes shot four Hyde Dynamics Semi-Independent Missile-14s into the dark of space. Operators started rattling off information as their four tightbeam communicators established link, piloting the nuclear weapons through the dark of space. They were the first nuclear war shots ever fired by the United States in space.

Jessup didn't ignore that. It'd been America and Old Russia that had caused the Twilight, atomic armageddon that brought society back centuries. Part of the Colonel knew this was different - but the thought of armageddon poked an inner fear that'd been stoked by years of schooling and history lessons.

When it was time, those missiles would detonate - spewing dozens of different high-power laser beams over the enemy target's stutter pattern. With luck, they'd score hits - and hits from a nuclear-pumped laser were often quite fatal to a starship.

The crews' hearts beat in silence, radio off, as Jessup heard his own breath against the visor of his helmet. Despite the danger, despite the holographic display, it was all so quiet on the stellar battlefield. All he had was his helmet fan for company.

The Colonel checked his watch. It'd only been eleven minutes. Eleven goddamned minutes.

War was too fast.

The SIM-14s closed and reached less than a light second's distance. Colonel Jessup nodded to weapons, who readied to fire.

Then the alarm blared through the TAC comm, coming from the automated reporting system: "Contact Lost, Missile #1. Contact-Contact Lost, Missile #2 and #3- Contact Lost, Missile #4."

Jessup's missiles disappeared, sliced down my enemy point defense lasers. The stimstick in the colonel's mouth dropped to his neck seal, falling from his lips. "Well, shit-" he said, realizing his hand was on the mic as he said that. "Weapons, keep dodging those enemy missiles. Spool six, we're gonna charge it."

'Charge It' meant something very different in the U.S. Space Force than it might on Earth. The goal was to take a large cluster of missiles, the max a Kennedy could handle with her communicators, and charge the ship in as a spearhead.

It was a theoretical tactic - a dangerous one. If successful, the Morrison would punch through the enemy fleet toward Aurore and Tithonius, while her missiles cut down the enemy fleet in a hailfire of nuclear-powered lasers.

Of course, that meant the ship needed to both make it through the enemy formation without being destroyed. The Kennedy relied on extreme speed and an elongated cone of probability - the stutter interval wherein the ship could 'possibly' be based on how fast it was teleporting. Due to inconsistencies in the ship's unique jumping pattern, only careful analysis allowed a proper hit on a jumping ship.

Thankfully, the twin drones of the Morrison had done the work for them - the Aliens had no drones, so they'd hopefully have time on the charge to avoid enemy fire, and hit them before they detected the missiles.

One by one, six missiles were dumped from the Calvin Morrison's four bays, forming a loose hexagon around the Morrison. With a gentle twist and a blurring flicker, the Morrison dove back into the fray. Jessup watched as they blew past the enemy missiles, which lazily turned to chase the Morrison.

The triple daggers of the alien fleet charged forward, blindly, as Morrison's laser turrets shifted. Light seconds and temporal minutes ticked by as Morrison closed to spitting distance - less than a light-second from the aliens. "Turret One! On target!" "Two! On target!" "Three, locked!" "Four, on target!" "Five, on target!" "Six, target acquired!"

Jessup narrowed his eyes. "Fire!"

Blazing lances of fire cut forth from the Kennedy's hull guns, slashing through the dark of space. Four hit - striking the lead enemy craft and searing against hard armor. "Report!" Jessup said.

"Hits, sir- but no apparent change in function. Enemies are turning to pursue."

"Detonate!" Jessup shouted.

Behind the Morrison on the map, all six missiles detonated. A massive flare of white washed out an entire section of the battle map - showing how the nukes disrupted sensors behind the action. Lances of nuclear-powered X-Ray lasers struck out.

Most missed.

One didn't. Missile #1, targeting the enemy ship Master #1, ripped into the enemy ship with gusto. The enemy rear took the brunt of the damage, but raking fire damaged their sensor towers, their engine compartments, and depressurized much of the enemy vessel Key among that damage was the enemy stutterwarp - their FTL engine - which cut  to a brutal halt. The enemy flagship was dead in space, and a ship not at stutterwarp was defenseless - a sitting duck. Even a civilian ship with a popgun could kill a warship coasting at normal velocities and vectors. 

The Aliens seemed to know this - abandoning the fight and sprinting into the nuclear cloud, leaving their missiles and the floundering Master-1 behind that foggy cover. Jessup watched the enemy ships retreat with a twitch in his eye, barely registering an order to recall the Morrison's twin drones. He'd just faced down three battleships, disabled one, and made the other two alien bastards run scared.

' _These cowards defeated the French and Ukes?_ ' He thought. Jessup blinked, watching the map flash green, as the Deck Officer turned. unlatching from his station. "Rig for normal?" the Officer asked over a private comm with the Colonel.

"Rig for normal," Jessup ordered, flicking over his radio to the 1/Main Channel. "All hands, all hands - single enemy ship dead in space, two fled. We just won Aurore back. Rig for normal, battlestations complete. SEAL Team, meet in the briefing room in five. Jessup out!"

_'I just won a goddamned space battle!_ '

 

Rolls For Second Bootis \- Way too long for the chapter  _and_ notes, so therefore at the end. Feel free to skip these - they aren't 100% accurate to the battle as Jessup describes. In the future I don't think I'll be attempting large battles as part of an actual narrative element since this took  _forever_ to both play out and write.

[PRE COMBAT]  
\- [Initiative Rolls: Calvin Morrison 10, Beta-1 7, Beta-2 8, Beta-3 6]  
\- [Range Bands: All Ships start at 16 - Very Long]

[TURN 1: SENSOR PHASE]  
\- [All ships are at Very Long range, lock impossible]

[TURN 1: MANEUVER PHASE]  
\- [Morrison moves to Range Band 12]  
\- [Morrison deploys 2x HD-10 Scout Drones (Cardigan & Blazer)]   
\- [All Kaefers move 5 to close range to RB7]   
\- [HD-10s close to RB4]   
\- [Morrison finishes RB7 apart from Kafers, HD-10s RB4 apart from Kafers]

[TURN 1: COMBAT PHASE   
\- [No combatants have lock. Skipped.]

[TURN 2: SENSOR PHASE   
\- [All Detection DMs too high. Skipped.]

[TURN 2: MANEUVER PHASE   
\- [Morrison passes to await Kafer action]   
\- [Kafers move 5 to close to RB2]  
\- [Master-1 deploys 2 Whiskey missiles]   
\- [Morrison deploys 4 SIM-14 missiles]   
\- [Morrison maneuvers RB5 to increase range to 7]   
\- [HD-10s now RB2 from Kafers, remain stationary]   
\- [SIM-14 missiles maneuver to RB0 with Kafers]   
\- [Whiskey missiles maneuver to RB0 with Morrison.]

[TURN 2: COMBAT PHASE]  
\- [No combatants have lock. Skipped.]

[TURN 3: SENSOR PHASE]  
\- [Morrison: Detecting Whiskey-class Missiles 15+: 4+8/12 FAIL]  
\- [Beta-1: Detecting SIM-14 Missiles 15+: 6+11/17 LOCK, Detecting Cardigan 17+: 11+6/17 LOCK, Detecting Blazer 17+: 6+6/12 FAIL]  
\- [Beta-2: Detecting Blazer 17+: 7+6/13 FAIL]  
\- [Beta-3: Detecting Blazer 17+: 9+6/15 FAIL]  
\- [Blazer: Detecting Master-1 13+: 7+8/15 LOCK, Master-2 13+: 8+8/16 LOCK, Master-3 16+: 6+8/14 LOCK]  
\- [Kafer Whiskey: Detecting Morrison 21+: 4+6/10 FAIL]  
\- [OUTCOME: Kafer Betas all locked for fire. American SIM-14s locked for fire. Cardigan locked for fire. Blazer, Kafer Whiskey Missiles, and Morrison remain unlocked.]

[TURN 3: MANEUVER PHASE]  
\- [Morrison: Maneuvers 9 away from Kafer missiles]  
\- [Kafer Beta Cruisers move 5 toward Morrison]   
\- [Kafer Whiskey Missiles move 7 toward Morrison]   
\- [Blazer and Cardigan Drones move 8 past the Betas]   
\- [SIM-14 Missiles move 5 to keep RB0 with the Betas]  
\- [OUTCOME: Relative to the Betas, Morrison is at RB11, the Whiskeys are at RB9, the HD-10s are at RB3.]

[TURN 3: COMBAT PHASE]  
\- [Master-1 fires at SIM-14 #1: 6+1/7 FAIL, Master-1 fires at SIM-14 #2: 7+1/8 HIT, SIM-14 #3: 5+1/6 FAIL, SIM-14 #4: 4+1/5 FAIL]  
\- [SIM-14 #2 Destroyed, 1, 3, and 4 remain.]  
\- [Master-2 fires at SIM-14 #1: 10+1/11 HIT, SIM-14 #3: 9+1/10 HIT, SIM-14 #4: 12+1/13 HIT]  
\- [All SIM-14s Destroyed]

[TURN 4: SENSOR PHASE]  
\- [Morrison: Detecting Whiskeys 17+: 8+6/14 FAIL]

[TURN 4: MANEUVER PHASE]  
\- [Morrison moves 7 away from the Kafers. Morrison launches 4 SIM-14 missiles which remain with Morrison.]  
\- [Master-2 and Master-3 both launch 2 Whiskey missiles. Whiskeys 1 & 2 from Master-1 are now called Group A (2 Missiles), this new group is now Group B (4 Missiles). Kafers move 5 toward Morrison.]  
\- [HD-10s move 8 away from the Kafers.]  
\- [Whiskey Group A moves 7 toward Morrison.]  
\- [Whiskey Group B moves 7 toward Morrison.]  
\- [OUTCOME: Relative to the Betas, Morrison is at RB13, Group A is at RB11, HD-10s are at RB6, Group B is at RB2.]

[TURN 4: COMBAT PHASE]  
\- No Combat

[TURN 5: SENSOR PHASE]  
\- [Morrison: Detecting Group A Missiles 17+: 8+4/12 FAIL]

[TURN 5: MANEUVER PHASE]  
\- [Morrison launches 2 SIM-14 Missiles for a total of 6. Morrison moves 9 to dogleg Group A, finishing at RB 4.]  
\- [Kafers move 4 towards Morrison to make RB0]  
\- [HD-10s move 8 away from combat, exit the battlespace]  
\- [Whiskey Group A moves 1 to enter the melee at RB0]   
\- [Whiskey Group B moves 7 to reach RB 0]  
\- [SIM-14 Group moves 7 to reach RB 1]  
\- [OUTCOME: All assets in play have closed to RB0 except the American SIM-14s, which are at RB1, and the HD-10 drones 'Blazer' & 'Cardigan' which have exited to the system shelf and are now out of play.]

[TURN 5: COMBAT PHASE]  
\- [Morrison takes Master-1, 6 Guns EA-122 Laser 1d6, Gunner DM +2, 8+, Shot 1: 8, 6 Damage/Shot 2: 8, 4 Damage/Shot 3: 7, Miss/Shot 4: 6, Miss/Shot 5: 12, 2 Damage/Shot 6: 12, 5 Damage - Damage unable to breach Armor (Rating 10).]  
\- [Kafer ships unable to fire]  
\- [SIM-14s firing on Master-1, Master-2, Master-3, 2 each. #1: 8, 6x14=84 Damage/#2: 9, 1x8=8 Damage /#3: 6 MISS/#4: 7 MISS/#5: 7 MISS/#6: 8, 5x8=40 Damage]  
\- [SIM-14 #1 inflicts 84 Damage on Master-1, -10 Armor for 74 Damage. Two Triple Hits plus 10 Single Hits, 5 Double Hits. Triple #1: Stutterwarp, Disabled, Triple #2: Sensors, Destroyed, Doubles: #1 Hullx2, #2: Hull x2, #3: Hullx2, #4: Hullx2, #5: Turret, Laser Turret #1 Disabled. Single Hits: Hull, Hull, Hull, Armor, Hull, Armor, Hull, Hull, Hull, Fuel (Leak 1d6/hr) - TOTAL FOR MASTER 1: 15 Hull Hits, Armor reduced by 2, Stutterwarp Disabled, Sensors Destroyed. DEAD IN SPACE, OUT OF PLAY.]  
\- [SIM-14 #2 unable to penetrate armor.]  
\- [SIM-14 #6 inflicts 40 Damage on Master-3, -10 for 30 Damage. Triple Hit, Single Hit. Triple: Turret, Laser #1 Destroyed. Single: Hull. -1 Hull, Single Laser offline on Master-3.]  
\- [OUTCOME: Master-1 is sensor-disabled and out of play from a severe single missile hit. Master-3 has taken minor damage from a single missile hit.]

[TURN 6: SENSOR PHASE]  
\- [Morrison to detect all Whiskeys 15+: 7+8/15 DETECTED]  
\- [Whiskeys to detect Morrison 21+: 9+6/15 FAIL]  
\- [Master-2 to detect Morrison 21+: 6+6/12 FAIL]  
\- [Master-3 to detect Morrison 21+: 6+6/12 FAIL]

[TURN 6: MANEUVER PHASE]  
\- [Morrison waits.]  
\- [Master-2 and Master-3 move 5 away from Morrison, away from Aurore and past the Giant Emitter (SIM-14 Explosions), breaking target lock]  
\- [Whiskey Missiles lose communication with Master-2/Master-3, and two missiles go offline from lack of comms with Master-1]   
\- [Morrison moves 9 toward Aurore.]  
\- [Giant Emitter to last 2d6 (12) rounds.]

[POST-COMBAT]  
\- [Kafer Beta Cruiser 'Master-1' disabled by missile fire, left without Stutterwarp or primary Sensors in a decaying orbit around Tithonius.]  
\- [Kafer Beta Cruisers 'Master-2'/'Master-3' exit the system under cover of the nuclear emitters of the SIM-14 missiles.]  
\- [Six Whiskey-type Missiles lose contact with their controllers and shut down, now war salvage.]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Battle Influence' - It's a cheap way of saying the main character won't die in a space battle he can't physically influence. It's also handwavium for any inaccuracies in mechanics I may have had.
> 
> This was a very hard chapter to write. Trying to translate RPG combat mechanics to actual writing is very difficult, and may mean I scrap the standard Mongoose Traveller combat rules for something very light. I'm still not satisfied with Second Bootis and may well replace/edit it later on. We're already on like the sixth revision and it still feels terrible.
> 
> Next stop, Aurore! If you didn't get enough description about this inhospitable hell world orbiting a brown dwarf, you're gonna pretty soon - as Remi takes a trip down to the surface of this besieged hellhole.


End file.
